Ben Lomond, CA - ( Jan 6) -
According to sources close to the cognition industry,
things are pretty much over. "Yep, things are pretty
much over, alright" said Joey Ramote, President and
Founder of Ramote Informatics and Telemation, during an
off-the-cuff Q&A session following a speech either he or
his brother Phil had just delivered at Sly and the
Family Stone Institute of Technology in Cupertino
California, 08608.

"Yep, the ever-tightening grip of vapid reality has
really shut down just about everyone's ability to even
consider [trying to toss] a sweet Hail Mary
[Play] into, you know, the far off serotonin sunset,"
added Phil Ramote, Joey's identical half-brother, "So
don't expect anything new, ever again, in any medium
other than, say, bathroom fixture design or managed
mental health brothels or maybe in the field of
sinecures for sycophants or pyrocures for pornofants, or
whatever."

According to other sources, unrelated to the Ramote
family circus, "Part of the decline in culture is really
only the perception of decline. It's related
more to the on-going strike by under-paid culture shills
-- you know, the people who've been quietly hired to
circulate amongst the unwashed masses, loudly
proclaiming how, for example, websites like
Salmon1999.com and Slave.Com are not
really as trivial and shitty as they seem, and how,
'artists' like Laurie Anderson, Jim Jarmusch and Mark
Leyner, might really be something more than just the
tepid, marginally updated Andy Rooney clones they appear
to be -- If you'd only spend enough time and money on
them and give them half a chance..."

"Temp shills are attempting to fill in," noted Chaka
Cohn, a Temp Personnel industry insider, "But without
rich experience and deep incentives, they can only fake
it for so long -- and eventually they crack -- usually
in ugly ways that totally discredit the sweet little
culture brandname they've ever so delicately been
ramming up and down even your tiniest and most
unexpected, uh, orifice."

"Without shills, those steaming little pieces of culture
just sit there and rot like a corporate website, or
like the corpse of some over-ambitious raccoon, fallen
off your roof during the night, greeting you on your
doorstep in the morning, ebullient with the gift of
fresh, hyper-active maggots," said Rebecca Kramer, film
and child custody critic for the smarmy Fox News
syndicate.

"And, meanwhile, on the creative side, like
nobody's even fucking trying. The top film is
named something like, 'Joe' or something, and the
number 2 film is named, like, 'Bob Smith', or something.

"The number 1 book is called 'A' and the number 2 book
is called, like, 'B' or 'More B Again' or something. I
mean, if people don't have the fucking imagination to
come up with half a fucking title, imagine what the
actual work is gonna' be like. Uhh, if you still
can imagine, that is."

Yet, according to at least one unnameable cultural
commentator, "One last white hope still remains perched
on the horizon of dreams, poised to leap into the abyss
of possibility. The upstart daily, Schmuck.com, in a
daring masterstroke has boldly gone forward and
throwing all fucking caution to the wind, boldly
redesigned its site to reflect the bold and
rapidly changing sensibilities of a bold new
era."

"Well, we thought that by moving the ad frame from the
side to the bottom, we'd be capturing the new
Weltanschaung of the new Zeitgeist, which
only kicked in maybe 2 days ago," said an, uh,
undisclosed Schmuck senior editor. "I mean, it's not
like we couldn't do interesting shit if we wanted
to, but it's like, you know, our market research
indicates that readers like it when we're bland and pedestrian.

"And besides -- somebody's gotta take on the straw men,
or, you know, we might all wind up in a mattress
someday. Or, at least, in a mattress factory, or
in an ad for mattresses. -- And so what if the
bold new design looks exactly like the Hotwired Obituary
Page, which, in turn, looks just like circa 1993
Prodigy. -- And so fucking what if...."

In a related news story, House Speaker, Newt Gingrich
delivered a devastating intellectual analysis
demonstrating conclusively why, once and for all, "Rape
is Bad." And then went on to propose that it's time for
hypocritical, disingenuous, money-grubbing, power and
ego-driven, in the box, narrow-minded, DC politicians to
start helping the pathetic masses rediscover the
spiritual side of life in our great nation.

Political junkies and junk collectors, much like Schmuck
readers, could only sit there with their jaws dropped
open wide, muttering, "Wow," while, outside, the Budget
Pest Buddies, carted off another raccoon crystal-meth
OD.